Out of Alice (12 page)

‘Bye, chicken.'

Clemmy climbed behind the wheel and waved. ‘See you Sunday,' she called as the vehicle drove off.

‘Well.' Helen dropped her hand. ‘Two days isn't much of a holiday, but they'll all enjoy it.'

Sara didn't reply. It was the word
holiday
that did it. It had flashed fully formed into her head, the picture of herself and Ben with buckets and spades at the beach. They wore bathers and were building a sandcastle in the shade of a huge umbrella, digging at the sand with more enthusiasm than skill. Their father was helping them. On the edge of her vision were big shoulders and hairy forearms that steadied the buckets – bright red and yellow to match their spades – and somewhere, she knew, was the caravan with the striped awning. They were on holiday, she and her parents and Ben, and his cloth hat fell back on its string from his ginger hair.

Here was another piece of the puzzle. Sara had no idea where it fitted but hugged to herself the happy feeling that the memory imparted. She was smiling when she went back into the house.

Helen was waiting for her in the kitchen doorway. ‘I like that young woman. Her timing is pure serendipity for Beth and the kids.'

‘Yes.' Sara looked past her. The cups had been cleared into the sink and the bread bowl was out on the table. ‘What are you making now?'

‘Depends. Would you like to try your hand at croissants?'

‘Why not? Did you bake professionally, Helen? You seem to have endless recipes in your head.'

‘That's because I worked for a boulanger in France when I was young. That's a baker. I was only there for twelve months, not enough time to become a master baker, but I enjoyed it. It was long before I was married, of course, but when I came back home, I kept it up. I love working dough. Just as well really, as all the stations baked their own bread back then. There were no freezers on the properties, and in some places no electricity either.'

‘So what were you doing in France? This much?' Waiting for Helen's nod, Sara mixed the yeast with the sugar and warm water.

‘Seeing the world, which in those days was Europe. My generation did that. The next lot raced off to India and Egypt to find themselves, but we did Britain and the continent. I went to stay with an old battleaxe of an aunt in Yorkshire, but she was too eighteenth century for words. So I cleared out and travelled around a bit. I did maid work in Spain, washed bottles in Italy, picked grapes in Malta. France was the best, though. I was broke. Monsieur Lesseur didn't pay much but the job had lunch thrown in, so I stayed and then got interested. I'd always liked cooking.'

‘How wonderful! I wish now that I'd travelled more. This is only the second time I've been out of my home state. So how did you find Frank? Was he in France too?'

Helen laughed. ‘Fat chance! Victoria's a foreign country to him. Sift the flour twice. No, I got a job in the Alice. It was like coming out to a frontier back then. I was still looking for adventure, you see. I met him at the races there.'

There was a hint of a smile in Sara's eyes. ‘Love at first sight?'

‘No. I was twenty-five, a bit old for teenage flights of fancy. But I liked him so when he asked me out I agreed and it grew from there. Quite a few young things come out to the bush looking for romance, but it's a tougher life than it may seem before the shine wears off. I was older, and up for the isolation and the drudgery – not like Jack's wife. She thought that having land, even if it's desert, meant piles of money.'

Sara covered the dough with a cloth and turned to the sink. ‘So, where is she now?'

‘Gone.' Helen set the timer. ‘It won't take long to prove. You'll need a baking tray, butter and a sharp knife for the next bit. And an egg for the glaze.'

The two women passed a quiet day. Sara, shifting hoses around and carrying the feed bucket early to the horses, was surprised by how much she missed having Becky chattering away beside her. Seeing Sara approach, Star and Lancer nickered a greeting and thrust eager muzzles into their feed tins. She had largely lost her fear of them and stood patting their necks and combing her fingers through their coarse mane hair as their lips gathered in the feed. If it ever rained – no,
when
it rained, she corrected herself – she would take up Sam's offer of riding lessons. If he was ever well enough to give them. Sara was aware that his recent victory was only part of an ongoing war. Standing there in the heat, eyes pinched against the brilliant light and breathing in the smell of dust and powdered dung, her heart ached for the young boy.

The day dragged on. It was odd how much difference Becky's absence made; the men were out and Helen was busy in the office, sorting through the accumulated mail for the bills marked as requiring immediate attention. Sara drifted through the house, bereft of purpose, and finally settled on the daybed on the side verandah. Here a late fitful breeze stirred the foliage of the lemon tree and set up the annoying scritching from the still-untrimmed branch. She would fix that this very day, she thought drowsily, but later, when it cooled off. The book fell from her fingers and with the sweat pooling in the hollow of her throat, she dreamed of parched paddocks layered over with carcasses, like the one she had seen on the day she arrived. Under a pitiless sun the mulga stood bare-branched like dark skeletons, and the only sound was the thin bleating of calves and the raucous cacophony of crows. Sara twisted and moaned unhappily, but a thin thread of awareness penetrated the dream.
It's not Redhill. Len shot the calves.
Beside her head the branch dragged against the wall and suddenly, in the manner of dreams, she was back in her flat, standing at her bedroom door with the hair prickling on her neck, knowing that her stalker was somewhere downstairs.

Sara woke with a gasp, her back bolting off the bed before she remembered and relaxed.
God!
Lifting the hem of her shirt, she wiped her face as her racing heart slowed. That, at least, hadn't happened. Yes, the man had broken into her flat and searched it but she hadn't been there at the time. It was just a dream. And she was safe now – Adelaide was hundreds of kilometres behind her. The break-in and getting the flowers afterwards had been the final straws that had pushed her into taking the temporary posting in Mildura as well as that last attempt at contacting Stella.

Recalling it now renewed the baffled fury of discovering that her mother had again eluded her. She had meant to demand answers of her, because whatever reason the man had for following her about, if it wasn't sexually motivated, had to lie in the past. Or did she only think that now that her memories had begun to return? Stella was the only key to her childhood. Sara's stalker's sudden appearance had seemed just a coincidence at the time but Jack was right – somehow the man's obsessive pursuit of her was connected to those lost years, as was the fear he generated in her. But Stella was insanely secretive, always had been, and forewarned by Sara's foolish phone call to her two days beforehand she had simply decamped, leaving no clue to her whereabouts.

Sara breathed out in exasperation; the wind had risen while she slept and now it dragged the lemon branch against the wall in a long ear-piercing scritch. It was too much! She rose on a flame of frustrated urgency and went looking for the secateurs.

The men returned just on dark, full of good spirits. In Len's case this was enhanced by the news, delivered as he reached the kitchen door, that Sam was out of hospital. ‘Great! I'll give them a call now.' He tossed his hat at the peg above the cupboard and glanced about. ‘Where's Becky? She'll want to talk to him too.'

‘She already is, if I know Becs,' Helen said. ‘The young woman from the park came through and she's taken her into town. I rang Beth first, of course.'

‘Ah, good thinking, Helen. I wish I was in there myself.'

‘You know you can go at anytime. We can manage here,' Helen began, but he was already striding for the office.

Jack, appearing next with Frank at his heels, hung his own hat. ‘You won't get rid of him now, Mum,' he announced. ‘Not with the driller on site.'

‘Already?' Sara jerked her head out of the cupboard where the plates lived. ‘I thought he was coming next week?'

‘Nope, he shifted camp today. He had a bit of trouble with his load – a chain broke on the rig and he never noticed. Scattered casing over ten k of country before he realised.' Jack filled a glass at the sink and drank it down. ‘Damn hard to spot white casing in dry grass, we've been chasing it all afternoon.'

‘It's why we're late, love,' Frank told Helen. ‘He'll be setting up in the morning. We could have water there come midday.'

‘So soon?' Sara stared. ‘But doesn't it take days, weeks even? I thought —'

Frank shook his head. ‘It's a rotary rig. Barring trouble, they'll punch a hole down in a coupla hours. Not like the old mud thumpers, they went at about the pace of a good man with a crowbar. This one's all hydraulic. There's something to be said for progress after all. Sometimes, that is.' He spoke more slowly than was usual and raised a hand to rub his brow, his face flushed with excitement – or perhaps relief, Sara thought.

‘Oh, I hope you get it,' she exclaimed. ‘I'll keep all my fingers crossed that the water's there.'

‘Why don't you come out with us tomorrow?' Jack asked. ‘You too, Mum. There's nothing here that won't wait half a day. Pack some lunch and if the luck's with us, we'll boil the billy from the new bore. How's that sound?'

‘Very Ketch,' Helen said dryly. ‘I trust you're planning on taking water out as well. You can't be too careful in this country.'

Jack gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘I know, Mum, I know. You've been telling me so since I was six. So that means you'll come? What about you, Sara?'

‘I wouldn't miss it for quids.' She smiled happily, but the words echoed in her head. What had made her say that? It wasn't a phrase she normally used. It must be something she had picked up from Frank, who still thought in quids and gallons and miles. He had confessed to her he couldn't get his head around litres. To his mind it was like measuring in pannikins – and where was the sense in chopping up miles just to call them kilometres?

‘It'll be hot,' Frank warned. He glanced at the ceiling fan as he walked towards his usual chair. ‘Doesn't this damn thing go any faster?'

‘It's on high,' Jack said. ‘You're getting soft in your old age, Dad.'

‘Age be blowed. It's hot – ask Sara. She hasn't had the brains baked out of her yet like the rest of you lot.' He reached for the chair back but staggered and missed it, fetching up against the table. ‘Clumsy,' he muttered and abruptly sat down. ‘Bit dizzy all of a sudden.'

Helen dropped the pot of beans she was draining into the sink and came to him, wiping her hands. ‘Frank Ketch,' she exclaimed wrathfully. ‘What have you been doing?' She laid her palm against his brow and then his face. ‘You're red as a tomato and burning up. Has he been in the sun?' she demanded, her glance skewering Jack.

‘Well, of course he has. We all have, Mum. There's not much shade on the Twelve Mile,' Jack protested.

‘Don't be dumb. I mean without a hat?'

‘No – well, yes, but only while the derrick was going up. Hard to look up without losing it. He took it off then, but only —'

‘Men! Let's hope it's just a touch of sun and not a full sunstroke. Come on, get him into the shower, Jack, and I'll make up an icepack. Have you a headache, Frank?'

‘Now you mention it, yeah. God, I don't feel too clever, and that's a fact.' Leaning heavily on the table, he pushed himself to his feet, his ruddy face noticeably paler. ‘I think I'll lie down for a bit.'

‘After you've cooled off,' Helen said. ‘Do as I say, please. If I must, I'll get the thermometer to prove I'm right.'

‘Better listen to her, Dad,' Jack advised. He shook his head in exasperated reproof as they passed through the doorway. ‘Why didn't you say something? We could've come straight back if we'd known you were crook.'

‘It was just a bit of a headache . . .' Frank's voice faded and Sara turned a concerned face to his wife.

‘Is there something I can do?'

‘Put the beans back to keep warm, there's a love.' Helen was decanting ice blocks into a plastic bag, which she wrapped in a tea towel. ‘I'll put the fan on in the bedroom and wet a sheet. With the icepack and a cold shower that should do the trick. He'll be right once his temperature comes down.'

‘Should – I mean, will you call the doctor?'

‘I'll check in with him,' Helen said. ‘He might suggest something else to try. Bad sunstroke can kill, but Frank's symptoms would be far worse if it was that. He'll need rehydration. Perhaps you could make up a jug of lemon drink?'

‘Yes, of course.' Taking a bowl, Sara switched on the yard lights and went out into the garden.

At breakfast the following morning Frank pronounced himself as fit as a mallee bull, which cut no ice with his wife.

‘You needn't think you're going anywhere today,' she said, layering cold meat and pickles on bread destined for sandwiches. ‘The doctor said to take it easy and that's exactly what you're going to do. I'll make sure of it. Honestly, Frank, you're not safe to be let out alone.'

He scowled half-heartedly, then changed it to a leer. ‘So with the place to ourselves, what shall we get up to? Any ideas, wife of mine?'

Sara giggled involuntarily and he winked at her. Helen cast him a withering look, then smiled. ‘Daft old goat,' she said, but her tone was fond and she touched his grey hair in passing.

‘I love the way your parents act with each other,' Sara commented to Jack as they drove off. She sat in the middle seat, wedged between the two men. ‘I didn't get to ask last night, Len – was Becky enjoying herself?'

‘Most fun she's had since Christmas, Beth reckons. Said we missed an opportunity. You should've gone too. Bit of a break for you.'

‘I don't mind,' Sara replied truthfully. ‘Town's just town, but how often can you see a driller strike water?'

Len's ebullient mood seemed to have collapsed overnight. He massaged his rubbery cheeks, pushing the flesh about, his tone pessimistic. ‘Yeah, well, that's if we do.'